Star Wars: The Last Jedi Read online

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  Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1200 Grand Central Avenue,

  Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-368-02564-5

  Visit www.starwars.com

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Images from the Film

  About the Author

  A long time ago in a galaxy far,

  far away….

  The FIRST ORDER reigns. Having

  decimated the peaceful

  Republic, Supreme Leader Snoke

  now deploys his merciless

  legions to seize military

  control of the galaxy.

  Only General Leia Organa’s small

  band of RESISTANCE fighters stand

  against the rising tyranny,

  certain that Jedi Master Luke

  Skywalker will return and restore

  a spark of hope to the fight.

  But the Resistance has been

  exposed. As the First Order

  speeds toward the rebel base,

  the brave heroes mount a

  desperate escape….

  ONCE there was a boy who grew up to become a Jedi Knight. Not just any Jedi, but one of the greatest in their history, a valiant hero who toppled an evil empire.

  He was also the last of their kind.

  For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights had been the guardians of peace and justice throughout the galaxy. With their connection to the Force, they could perform astonishing feats, influence minds, and perceive glimpses of what was and what might be. Yet for all their foresight, the Jedi failed to foresee their own future. One of their order turned against them, hunting down the other Jedi until their numbers were few and their light was all but extinguished.

  The boy knew none of this growing up. What he did know was the barren desert of his home, where water was more valuable than gold.

  He had a happy childhood. His aunt and uncle raised him on their moisture farm, and he was their son in all but name. His uncle could be cranky, but taught him everything from fixing vaporators to flying airspeeders, and his aunt was warm, spoiling him when she could. Like many boys his age, he was impatient, curious, and a bit brash. He had a talent for tinkering and a passion for speed.

  He also had dreams.

  On evenings after he’d finished his chores, he would go out and watch the binary sunset. The twin suns would descend below the dunes, one blazing white-hot, the other orange-red. Cast in the amber light, the boy would wonder about himself, who he was, where he would go, what he would become. He dreamed of getting off his dull and dusty homeworld and training to be a pilot, so he could sail through the depths of space, so he could see the stars.

  He dreamed of being like his father.

  What little the boy knew of his father he had learned from his uncle, in snatches and grumbles. Supposedly, his father had been a navigator on a spice freighter, yet something tragic had happened. His uncle had never elaborated, insisting the boy quit daydreaming and accept life on the homestead. There was no shame in being a moisture farmer. No shame at all.

  Years passed, and this boy was now an old man. He stood on a cliff overlooking a great sea. He wore sackcloth robes under a woolen cloak. A hood protected his face from the wind. The water before him stretched to the horizon like the dune seas of his home, broken only by mountainous islands.

  He had come to this forgotten world to retire in solitude. All his dreams he had fulfilled long before. He had flown the depths of space, seen the stars and all the light and dark between. He had nothing more to give and desired nothing in return. He just wanted to be left alone, in peace.

  But after many years, he had been found.

  He turned slowly from the sea. A girl stood on the other side of the plateau.

  She approached but stopped within a few paces of him. He hesitated before he reached up with his hands—one of flesh and blood, the other of metal and wire—and pulled down his hood. For a long moment, he and the girl beheld each other, quiet with their own thoughts.

  She had dark brown hair, braided in triple buns. Her vest and tunic were the color of sand. Gauze was wrapped around her arms, and her trousers were short, exposing fair skin above leather boots. She carried a quarterstaff that appeared salvaged from a gear axle. A worn canvas satchel dangled from her hip. Freckles dotted her face.

  She slung the strap of her staff over her shoulder and opened her satchel. From that she removed a chrome cylinder about half the length of her arm. It was the hilt of a lightsaber. She held it out to him.

  He inhaled deeply, and trembled.

  This lightsaber had once belonged to him, and to his father before him. He had lost the weapon when he had lost his hand, during a fateful duel in a city among the clouds. He had thought it gone, forever, yet somehow it had been found, as had he.

  He clenched his jaw and frowned. He did not take the lightsaber from her.

  Her grip on the device wavered. She blinked. Her confusion gave way to distress. Yet still she held the hilt out to him. She wanted him to have it. She pleaded with her gaze.

  The man’s frown broke. His eyes moistened. The lightsaber carried so many memories. Too many. He shouldn’t accept it. Not now. Not after so long.

  His metal fingers touched the hilt and took it from her.

  The man stood there, near the edge of the cliff, considering the lightsaber in his grasp. It felt as light and familiar as it had the first time he had held it, back when he was around the girl’s age. The old hermit who had given it to him said his father had built the lightsaber and had wanted his son to have it, but the boy’s uncle wouldn’t allow it.

  That day, so long before, was the day his life had changed. It was the day he no longer had only dreams. It was the day he suddenly had a destiny.

  Holding the hilt now, part of him wished he had never held it at all.

  With a swift snap of his wrist, the man flung the lightsaber off the cliff, toward the sea.

  “THEY’VE found us!” shouted a tactical officer.

  On the bridge of the Resistance cruiser Raddus, Poe Dameron stood with General Leia Organa and her protocol droid, C-3PO, whose coverings had been recently buffed to a bright and shiny brass. But there was nothing bright or shiny in what captured their attention. Above a communications table the holograms of three dark-hulled warships blinked into existence, setting off alarms and panic across the bridge.

  Admiral Ackbar, the Mon Calamari military genius who had directed the Rebel Alliance’s triumph at Endor, manipulated the table’s controls with his webbed hands. Two of the warships wer
e identified as First Order Star Destroyers, the Fellfire and General Hux’s flagship, the Finalizer. The other was the massive cannon-laden Dreadnought Fulminatrix.

  “Well, we knew that was coming,” Poe muttered.

  The Resistance had recently obtained intelligence about the First Order’s fleet from a pair of battle-hardened spies. Not only did the data include detailed schematics of the Dreadnought, it showed that the enemy’s navy was much larger than anyone had estimated. Anticipating the First Order would retaliate for the destruction of Starkiller Base, the Resistance leadership had begun the evacuation of their secret headquarters on D’Qar in earnest. But what no one had foreseen was how quickly the First Order would locate their hideout.

  Poe pressed the transceiver button on the table. “Connix, is the base fully evacuated?”

  Lieutenant Kaydel Ko Connix’s image appeared on a monitor. Her long blond hair was knotted in side buns, and her natural smile wavered under stress. “Still loading the last batch of transports,” she said. “We need more time!”

  A glance out the viewport showed freighters, transports, and personnel shuttles rocketing away from the green orb of D’Qar. All headed toward the Raddus or one of the three other capital ships that made up the Resistance’s meager starfleet: the spindly hospital frigate Anodyne, the bunker buster Ninka, and the cargo hauler Vigil. But it was clear that many wouldn’t make it to safety, since they lay in the firing range of the Destroyers and Dreadnought.

  Poe wished he were out there in his X-wing defending the evacuees instead of stuck on the bridge as a spectator. The mechanics had just mounted a souped-up booster engine to his starfighter and there seemed no better time than the present to put it to use.

  Poe turned to General Organa. She was the last living princess of Alderaan and had witnessed firsthand her homeworld’s annihilation by the Empire’s Death Star. Her hair was rolled in a neat tuck and she wore a regal mantle over a plain silk gown, both in black. If not for the color of her dress, Poe never would have known she was mourning the death of her husband, Han Solo. He could only imagine the heartache she was hiding under her poise.

  “You’ve got an idea,” she said to him, “but I won’t like it.” She didn’t make him explain himself. “Go.”

  Poe issued a remote command to his astromech, BB-8, from his wrist comm and rushed to the cruiser’s hangar. When he got there, BB-8 was already secured in the socket of Poe’s X-wing, Black One. Poe climbed into the pilot’s seat. “Let’s roll.”

  The starfighter shot out of the cruiser’s hangar, its S-foils clamped and wings closed for maximum velocity. Poe called up an overview of the Fulminatrix on his cockpit display. Larger than the other vessels, the Dreadnought resembled three Star Destroyers welded atop each other in the form of a sinister, three-layered spearpoint. Turbolaser guns along its upper hull turned toward the Resistance fleet in orbit while the huge autocannons on its belly began to charge with energy. Poe’s job was to stall the Dreadnought from firing those autocannons at D’Qar until the evacuation of the base was complete.

  He flew straight toward the warships. BB-8 squawked his displeasure, which the X-wing’s computer translated as he had a bad feeling about this.

  “Happy beeps, buddy. We’ve pulled crazier stunts than this,” Poe said. While that might be true, he also knew one hit from a turbolaser and they’d be goners. “Happy beeps,” he repeated, to calm his own nerves.

  “For the record, I’m with the droid on this one,” General Organa said over the private comm channel.

  “Thanks for your support, General,” Poe replied, amused that she was listening to his in-flight chitchat. But that was what made her an exceptional general. Her eyes and ears were everywhere, never missing a detail.

  C-3PO’s network of spy droids had reported that the head of the First Order’s military, General Hux, had survived the destruction of Starkiller Base. With Poe out and about, it was time to see if that intelligence was indeed correct. Poe signaled the Finalizer in a subspace broadcast. “Attention! This is Poe Dameron of the Republic fleet. I have an urgent communiqué for General Hugs,” he said, intentionally mispronouncing the general’s name.

  No response came. The X-wing continued its approach and would soon be in the warship’s firing range. BB-8 gibbered anxiously. Poe was about to agree that maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all when a pompous voice replied to his hail. “This is General Hux of the First Order. The Republic is no more. Your ‘fleet’ is rebel scum. Tell your precious princess there will be no surrender.”

  Following his plan, Poe pretended he hadn’t heard the threat. “Hi, I’m holding for General Hugs.”

  “This is Hux! You and your friends are doomed. We will wipe your filth from the galaxy!”

  Poe continued his charade. “Okay, I’ll hold.”

  He waited. Clicks echoed over the comm. “Can you…Can he hear me?” Poe heard Hux ask someone on his bridge.

  Black One was getting closer and the warships still hadn’t fired. Poe’s plan might work if he dragged out the conversation a little longer. “Hugs—with an H. Skinny guy. Sallow.”

  “I can hear you. Can you hear me?” Hux sounded irritated.

  Poe’s range counter neared zero. “I can’t hold forever. If you reach him, tell him Leia has an urgent message for him.” He wished Hux could see his smirk. “About his mother.”

  BB-8 trilled in glee. Poe had to hush him to hear the confusion from the Finalizer’s command staff. “I believe he’s tooling with you, sir,” said one of Hux’s advisors.

  “Open fire!” Hux yelled.

  Poe cut the connection and grabbed his flight yoke. “Beebee-Ate, punch it!”

  Its newly installed booster engine blazing, Black One tore past the Finalizer toward the Fulminatrix and opened its S-foils into attack position. The Dreadnought’s turbolasers erupted immediately. Poe weaved the X-wing through the fire and dove close to the Fulminatrix’s hull, making his fighter a difficult target to hit.

  He switched the comm to a friendly frequency and initiated the next stage of his semi-improvised plan. “Taking out the cannons now. Bombers, start your approach!”

  Eight Resistance bombers, resembling atmospheric weathervanes with tubular fuselages, sped toward the Dreadnought from the opposite angle of Poe’s approach. A score of X-wings and wedge-shaped A-wings surrounded the bombers as a starfighter escort.

  “Bombers, keep that formation tight. Fighters, protect the bombers,” commed Tallie Lintra, a former cropduster who flew the lead A-wing. “Let’s do some damage and buy our fleet time.”

  Poe skimmed his X-wing over the Dreadnought’s surface, blasting cannon after cannon to protect the bombers’ approach. Since he flew under the firing arc of the guns, they were unable to hit him and proved easy targets to knock out. Poe had destroyed all except one cannon when BB-8 whistled a warning.

  The X-wing’s proximity sensors showed TIE fighters racing out of the Dreadnought toward the bombers. Painted mostly black, with two slim vertical wings connected to a circular cockpit, the TIEs were named after their twin ion engines, which gave them incredible speed. Though they lacked strong shields and had only two laser cannons compared with an X-wing’s four, the TIEs’ greatest assets were their pilots. They were afraid of nothing—not even death. To die in battle for the First Order was the greatest sacrifice a TIE pilot could make.

  Three split off from the group to trail Black One. “Here comes the parade,” Poe said.

  Laser fire from the TIEs rattled his X-wing’s underside, where its shields were weakest. One lucky shot must have severed a power line to his cannons, because all of a sudden Poe couldn’t return fire. “Beebee-Ate, my weapon systems are down. We need to take out that last cannon or our bombers are toast. Work your magic!”

  Poe threw his X-wing into a series of barrel rolls, dodging enemy fire to give BB-8 a chance to weld the power line. A glance out the canopy showed the TIE squadrons were about to swarm the Resistance starfighters. “Tallie,
heads up,” he said.

  “Gunners, look alive!” Tallie commed.

  A-wings and X-wings engaged the TIEs while the bombers unleashed their turret guns. A brilliant display of laser bolts bloomed into a riot of fireballs. Dozens of TIEs met explosive ends, but the First Order still held the advantage with its greater numbers.

  “They’re everywhere! I can’t—” said a pilot before his voice fizzled out.

  Poe knew that voice. Good old Tubbs, who was always keen to mentor new fighter jocks. Now he was gone—as was the Candovantan ace Zizi Tlo. The TIEs had blown her A-wing to pieces.

  “We’re not going to get old out here, Poe,” Tallie said. “Give me good news!”

  “Hold tight!” Poe checked the status of his lasers. “Beebee-Ate, we gotta kill that last cannon. I need my guns!”

  BB-8 carped back that the problem was in the hard-to-reach junction box. Repairs were going to take more time.

  Poe evaded another enemy salvo, keeping the remaining turbolaser cannon in his sights. All he had to do was take it out so the bombers could safely drop their payloads on the Dreadnought and deal another major blow to the First Order.

  But the Fulminatrix was determined to land its punch first. The two autocannons on its undercarriage belched a river of energy toward D’Qar. An explosion mushroomed where the Resistance base had been on the planet. Poe hoped no one was still down there.

  Admiral Ackbar put to bed any such fears. “The last transports are aboard,” the Mon Calamari gurgled in a wide broadcast. “Evacuation is complete!”

  Poe let out a breath. Now all he had to do was destroy one last cannon and they wouldn’t have to worry about the Dreadnought.

  General Organa spoke over the private channel. “Poe, you did it. Now get your squad back here. We need to get the fleet out of here.”

  Poe couldn’t believe what the general was saying. “No, we can finish this! How many chances do we get to take down a Dreadnought?”

  “Disengage now—that’s an order!”

  Poe pretended not to hear her last command and clicked off the comm. She’d reprimand Poe for what he was about to do, but crippling the Fulminatrix would be worth any punishment. He swerved Black One around the TIEs that had been chasing him and squared the last cannon in his targeting computer. “Beebee-Ate—it’s now or never!”